Unknown Kimball runs memorable 1986 campaign

by Dan Nowicki - Jul. 8, 2008 05:41 PMThe Arizona Republic

Richard Kimball had a revelation during his 1986 race for the Senate against John McCain.

Kimball, a Democrat who'd served in the Arizona Legislature and on the Corporation Commission, found that high-powered politics didn't agree with him: “the meaningless nonsense” shoveled on voters, the pandering, the campaign stunts, the charges and countercharges and, especially, the constant “collecting money from people we basically didn't know who would want access to us.”

He thought there had to be a way to better inform the electorate. Eventually he would found the nonprofit and nonpartisan organization known as Project Vote Smart, which makes voter education its mission.

Kimball was an unlikely candidate to take on McCain, then a two-term Republican congressman probably still better known as a Navy aviator who was shot down over North Vietnam and held captive for more than five years.

His father was the late Bill Kimball, who'd served as Arizona Senate majority leader and made an unsuccessful run for governor in 1956, but he hardly was Arizona political royalty.

At 37, he was younger than McCain, who would turn 50 in 1986. And Kimball was single, having been divorced from Maricopa County Supervisor Carole Carpenter.

Kimball's physical resemblance to actor Robert Redford drew comparisons to the 1972 political movie The Candidate. His name also became the fodder of newspaper ribbing. It phonetically was the same as “Dr. Richard Kimble,” David Janssen's character in the popular 1960s TV drama The Fugitive about a falsely accused man on the run from the authorities.

He also was a onetime campus peace activist.

“Everybody knew I was an anti-war demonstrator. Everybody knew that when I was in college, marijuana touched my lips and I inhaled a hell of a lot,” Kimball recalled during a recent interview with The Arizona Republic, one of his first public discussions of the long-ago race. “I admitted I was that way in college, and here I was running against a guy who went through five-and-a-half years of hell in a Vietnam prison camp.

“I don't know if that makes you the literal definition of a hero, but to have survived it and not been broken down entirely is an incredibly admirable thing that, I think, demands respect,” he said.

Kimball entered the race only after top-tier Democrats, most notably then-Gov. Bruce Babbitt, declined to take on McCain. Kimball didn't think McCain, then still a relative newcomer to Arizona politics, deserved the legendary Sen. Barry Goldwater's seat uncontested.

Kimball did not impress McCain and his allies, who'd been bracing for the heavyweight Babbitt.

“We ended up with Richard Kimball, and anything's possible in politics, but you'd be charitable to characterize him as even a credible opponent,” said Jay Smith, McCain's political consultant during the 1986 race. “He was not formidable.”

McCain was the clear frontrunner. He'd been running for seven months before Kimball announced and boasted a campaign-cash advantage. But Kimball would make it a spirited and memorable election.

After McCain blundered by making a tasteless joke about residents of the retirement community Leisure World (he eventually apologized for referring to it as “Seizure World”), Kimball's campaign rallied to fully exploit McCain's gaffe.

Looking back, Kimball laughs at the ridiculousness of the scene and points to it as an example of the sort of politics that don't exactly illuminate the issues for voters.

“Here he was getting crunched for just something stupid that I might have said,” Kimball recalled. “Our campaign manager got some senior citizens to do a demonstration in front of his office. One of them came dressed in a casket to rise up one last time to vote against John McCain. It was just absurd.”

Though McCain always held a solid lead in the polls and his victory never really was in doubt, the race became emotionally charged.

A Kimball salvo that McCain was “bought and paid for” by the defense and utility industries and other special interests particularly riled the Republican. In his 2002 memoir Worth the Fighting For, McCain recalled Kimball's unflattering campaign-trail portrayal of him: “. . . Besides being a shockingly remorseless seniors basher, I was also an unthinking conservative reactionary, a special pleader for fat-cat defense contractors, and a cowardly debate ducker to boot.”

McCain could be harsh, too, saying that Kimball, who never served in the military, “flunked ROTC.” Debates turned into reliably feisty affairs.

On Election Day, as expected, McCain routed Kimball, beating him by more than 180,000 votes, or roughly 60 percent to 40 percent.

Richard Kimball, right, appears with John McCain at this 1986 debate at Carl Hayden High School. Kimball was McCain's Democratic opponent that year for the U.S. Senate seat vacated by the retiring Barry Goldwater.